Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1887-05-13
ISLAND POND, VERMONT, MAY 10, 1887

ter, but long after the paper is gone the
result may perhaps be seen in the blasted
Imagination Of those who saw it. The queen
of death holds banquet every night and
these periodicals are the printed invitation 10
her guests. Alas that the fair brow Oh
American art should be blotched with TINS
plague-spot, and that phianthropists, bother
ing themselves about smaller evils, should llit
up no united and vehement voice against TINS
great calamity
Young mani buy not this moral strychnlne
for your soul Pick not up this nest of coiled
adders for your pocket! Patronize no news
stand that keeps them! Have your room bright
with good engravings; but for these unclean
pictorials have not one wall, not one bureau,
not one pocket. A man is no better than the
pictures he loves to look at. If your eyes
are not pure, your heart cannot be. At
news stand one can guess the character
of the man by the kind of pictorial he pur-
chases. When the devil fails to get man to
read bad book, he sometimes succeeds in get
ting him to look at bad picture. When
Satan goes a-fishing he does not care whether
1t Is long line or q short line, if he only
draws his victim in. Beware of lascivious
pictoria,s young man; in the name Of AL
might God charge you.
If l have this morning successfully laid
down any principles by which you may Judge
in regard to boale syd newsraDeFs then
nave done something wnlcn / than not be
ash amed OF on the day which shall try every
mans work, of what sort it is
Cherish good books and newspapers Be-
ware of the bad ones. One column may save
your soul; QUE paragraph may ruin it.
benjamin Franklin said that the reading of
"Cotton Mather's Essay on Doing Good"
nodded his entire life. The assassin of Lord
Russell declared that he was led into
crime by reading one vivid romance
The consecratel John Angel James,
than whom England never produced better
man, declared in his old days that he had
never yet got over the evil effects Of having
for fifteen minutes once read a bad book
But / need not go so far off l could come
near home, and tell you of something that
occurred in my college days. I could tell
you of a conrade who was great hearted,
noble, and generous He was studying for
an honorable profession but he had
an infidel book in his trunk, and
he said to me one day: ode Witt,
would you like to read itT' answered: Eyes,
would" I took the book and read it only
what I saw there, and l handed the book
back to him and said ''You had better de-
stroy that book" No, he kept it, He read
it. He re-read it. After while he gave up
religion as a myth. He gave UP God as a
non enity. He gave pthe Bible as fable. He
gave up the Church Of Christ as a useless in
stitution. He gave up good morals as being
unnecessarily stringent. l have heard of him
but twice in many years. The time before
the last l heard of him, he was a confirmed
inebriate. The last time heard of him. he
was coming out of an insane asylum-ir
body, mind and soul an awful wreck. I be-
lieve that one infdel book killed him for two
worlds.
Go home to-day, and look through your
library, and then, having looked through
your library, look on the stand where you keer
your pictorials and newspapers, and apply
the Christian principles have laid down thi
morning. If there is anything in your home
that cannot stand the test, do not give ii
away, for it might spoil an immortal soul
do not sell it, for the money you gel
would be the price of blood; but rather kin
die fire on your kitchen hearth, or in your
back yard, and then drop the poison in it, anc
keep stirring the blaze until from preface oap
pendix there shall not be single paragraph
left, and the bonfire in Brooklyn shall be a!
consuming as that one in the streets O.
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